Omega ratio page

[rphlslv]

If my goal is to gain muscle/strength while preventing fat gains, is this something I should worry about?

I'm tired of throwing away 12 egg yolks a day in order to maintain a 1:1 ratio, when I could be eating all those protein and fats to help me put on some muscle... don't worry these are cheap eggs... 89 cents a dozen. (no I will not spend extra cash on omega 3 eggs)

So how important is it, really?

And here's another question. Is the ratio more important than the quantity? What if I eat lots of PUFA's (30 grams) but have 1:1 ratio? Is that better or worse than low PUFA (current 10 grams) at 1:1 ratio?

[Anand Srivastava]

What I understand from Stephan at WholeHealthSource is that 1:1 is not strictly important 1:2 would do. Total PUFA is important. It should not be high. Stephan says that O6 causes the most damage at 4% of calories. I would think that this limit is valid only when there is little O3 in the diet. Still you would want to limit the O6 within 4% of your total calories. You can add enough Fish oil to take your level to 1:2. I believe that is a good level to aim at.

Ofcourse if you are eating a dozen conventional eggs then 6gms of O6 will add a lot to your bottom line. I would think that paying a bit more for the O3 eggs would be a better way than to throw the most of the nutrition in the eggs. It might be cheaper to pay more if you consider the things you throw away.

[cerebelumsdayoff]

If you can't do with pricier eggs, why not try a egg white: egg yolk ratio?

Rather than throwing all yolks away, why not keep one yolk for every four eggs?

For every dozen, you save two yolks and reap some of their nutrition. Sounds like you already stocked on sardines, which will give you another omega 3 and protein boost.

[rphlslv]

If you can't do with pricier eggs, why not try a egg white: egg yolk ratio?

Rather than throwing all yolks away, why not keep one yolk for every four eggs?

For every dozen, you save two yolks and reap some of their nutrition. Sounds like you already stocked on sardines, which will give you another omega 3 and protein boost.

I've been doing just that actually. 2 egg yolks per dozen. I use it for my pancakes.. yum.

Even if I decide to eat the whole eggs from now on, I'm still gonna eat these cheap ones. Their yolks are bright yellow and I can't tell the difference between these and the "organic" kind.

I just checked and my O6 is 2% of total calories, at 5.2 grams.

I think I'll just find another cheap source of protein. Chicken breast is cheap, and even though it has lots of PUFA, and I could boil it to remove the fat.

I'm gonna keep doing what I've been doing and see if the benefits will show up. It's only been a week.

[Grol]

I think we could have an interesting discussion about the original question. Are Omega 3s really that important? Seriously. I looked at a bunch of contrary research yesterday. Even Peter at Hyperlipid posted some of it. Then I went shopping and I got this sense of "low fat" de ja vu. Omega 3 bread. Omega 3 cereal. Omega 3 eggs. Omega 3 milk. Omega 3 tortilla chips. Omega 3 chocolate. Omega 3 low fat yogurt. Ugh. The conventional wisdom is sure pimping omega 3s.

I've been obsessed with inflammation and believing 06:03 was the key to my issues. I am having second thoughts.

[Katie82]

rphlslv, I've read that they are starting to put orange food dye in chicken feed so that the yolks will be more yellow. I'm not sure how true this is but I definitely would not put it past these people. Still, I've gotten organic, pastured eggs before and they had light yellow yolks and milky whites and they were disgusting. Now, I get local conventional eggs and they are always good with orange yolks so the whole egg issue confuses me. But I wouldn't take the color of the yolk as a sign of anything good in there

[MikeEnRegalia]

Ofcourse if you are eating a dozen conventional eggs then 6gms of O6 will add a lot to your bottom line. I would think that paying a bit more for the O3 eggs would be a better way than to throw the most of the nutrition in the eggs. It might be cheaper to pay more if you consider the things you throw away.

You have to take into account though that O3 enriched eggs usually don't contain the kind of O3s that we need - they merely contain alpha linolenic acid, and only a small part of it is converted to EPA and DHA, depending on other factors. I'd rather eat normal, organic eggs (I can forget about grass fed chicken/eggs in Germany, where I live) and supplement O3 with fish oil or sardines.

[Egoldstein]

I think whole eggs are whole foods and removing the yolk is artificial. When O-3 enhanced eggs are not available, I eat regular eggs.

Grol, there's a book called Queen of Fats that outlines the importance of O-3 and the problems that the modern diet has introduced.

I think that removing all soy oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and corn oil (this really means no processed foods) and eating pastured, grassfed meats,when possible plus having a serving of fish each week and having fish oil supplements gets you to as close as reasonable. Other measures, or aggressive supplementation, probably introduce some other unintended issues.

[Stabby]

You don't have to get rid of all of the egg yolks. A few of them could be a good thing. Just make sure they have omega 3 in them. I think that quantity is important. Fish oil is highly reactive and we ideally don't want to have to take much of it at all. And I don't know about anyone else but I can't bring myself to eat THAT much fish. There is also a good reason to keep omega 6 to about 3% of energy or less. At around 4% energy we don't produce any more eicosanoids (although the additional omega 6 displaces omega 3 and thus lessens the counter-effect) so if we want less eicosanoid action, more in accordance with evolutionary environment, roughly 3% energy is a good range. Also there is the peroxidation issue and I don't think we should really be consuming very much polyunsaturated fat at all, omega 3 or omega 6. But if someone is heavily tilted towards omega 6 they should probably go hard on the omega 3 for a month or two and then stop consuming very much polyunsaturated fat. That's what I have reasoned is optimal. Tons of omega 6 countered with tons of omega 3 seems very undesirable.

The conventional eggs are basically a cheap source of inflammation. Downright puny nutrient content. The commerical flax-fed ones however are excellent nutrition and have omega 3. That's what I get. Free-range, even from a farmer's market is a rip.

[MikeEnRegalia]

I've been obsessed with inflammation and believing 06:03 was the key to my issues. I am having second thoughts.

I think that it's important, but we shouldn't expect some miraculous effects. We should simply acknowledge that O6 overload is not healthy and that we should try to avoid it. In any case, it takes several months for such a change to bring results, and it's very difficult to properly attribute any effects to this particular cause, since it's hardly the only thing that you change during these months.